“There will be a lot of stories analyzing the Windows Phone 8 which appears on the heels of Phone 7 hitting the streets. Apparently the most aggressive features on Phone 8 will not run on the latest Nokia Lumia phones, thus not allowing an upgrade for users,” John C. Dvorak writes for PC Magazine. “This Nokia-Microsoft thing is rather weird since everyone thought that the connection between the two companies was tight. After all, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop came from Microsoft, where he was in charge of the business division. How he manages to keep his job at Nokia is amazing and we all should assume that Microsoft is doing all this to buy Nokia outright. I guess Redmond would rather buy Nokia in shambles than buy it healthy. It’s cheaper.”
Dvorak asks, “Exactly what is the Microsoft marketing department thinking with this announcement? The Windows Phone 7 is getting no traction and Microsoft wants people to pay some attention to it. So they decide to submarine the whole OS with a new version that isn’t immediately available? Was this a move to sell more Windows Phones by Nokia? Really? Are they that brain-dead?”
“After pulling this stunt, Microsoft hopes to get other vendors on board with the Windows Phone OS? What company would ever do it? In a panic move Microsoft has killed Windows Phone,” Dvorak writes. “They’ve killed it dead. You watch.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Of course, Microsoft has frozen the Windows Phone market until “this fall,” but the phones weren’t really selling anyway, so basically they lose another 3-4 months when they’re already years behind. Better to try to unify the mess with one codebase (even if it is Windows) than to continue with what they had, but, really: tick-tock, tick-tock.
Nokia’s Lumia 900 being left out of the upgrade path does smack of last minute, panicked changes. Also, it’s quite possible, even more likely with what we know now about the Lumia’s inability to be upgraded to WP8, that Microsoft simply wanted to kill Nokia all along. This whole Nokia fiasco could have just been Microsoft’s plan to get MeeGo out of their way. Microsoft does hate the guts out of Linux, after all, and MeeGo could have been in a position to become the replacement for Android that the market may be looking for when all of the courts have finally had their say.
We still think that Android has more than enough issues – fragmentation, legal, and otherwise – to open the door to the “not-iPhone” market for Microsoft to finally walk through.
That said, freezing your own market for another 1/4 or 1/3 of a year certainly doesn’t help Microsoft. Luckily, the interminable court systems of the world give Microsoft plenty of time to have something ready for when handset makers just might be desperately looking for something to replace Android.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “dslarsen” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
How Steve Jobs changed the game and forced Microsoft to try playing by Apple’s rules – June 21, 2012
Full 2-hour video: Microsoft details Windows Phone 8 – June 21, 2012
Nokia cuts jobs, slashes R&D; adopts Microsoft’s Windows Phone ’07 in iPhone killer quest – February 11, 2011
